We found it easier to add and delete songs via drag and drop, with the irock mounted as a removable disk, instead of doing it in iTunes. In any case, it’s unreasonable to expect users to rename all the songs in a music library to get the songs to work with a specific player. However, we used the same playlist for each player, and the irock was the only player that caused iTunes to crash or freeze. First International Digital says this is due to iTunes’ inability to deal with long file names and certain characters. The irock 860 also shows up as a playlist in iTunes, but it crashed the program on several occasions when we tried to add and remove songs.
FALSH MP3 PLAYER FULL
The Rios do a better job of displaying track information - they list the full ID3 tag information (data stored in an MP3 file, including artist, song name, album title, genre, and more), whereas the Mojo 128F lists only song names. Like the Mojo 128F, the Rio players show up in iTunes as playlists, so it’s easy to drag and drop files from your iTunes library to the attached device. It has more features that work while the player is connected to your iTunes library, with options for erasing tracks, updating the player’s firmware, and adding or removing folders. The Mojo 128F has the best iTunes compatibility of any of the MP3 players.
And remember that because these players have lower capacities, you’ll be transferring music to them more often than you would to an iPod or an iPod mini. If you’re always on the go and must be able to transfer music quickly, you’ll probably be dissatisfied with one of these players. The much slower transfer rate is a trade-off for the lower price you pay for a flash player, and it’s one to consider carefully. But transferring the same amount to the Fuse and the AudioRave took a painful 5 minutes, and they’re just a small sample of the players we tested all the flash players we tested transfer at USB 1.1 speeds. We transferred 122MB of MP3s (about three albums’ worth) to an iPod, which uses FireWire, and it took only 22 seconds. Transfer RateĪs we expected, transferring MP3s to these players took much more time than transferring music files to an iPod. At that price, the argument for buying an iPod or an iPod mini gets even stronger. A 512MB memory card - the largest the Rios can hold - will set you back $150 to $200. This is an easy way to dramatically boost those players’ capacities however, expansion cards are rather expensive. The storage capacity of the Chiba, Cali, and Mojo 128F can be expanded by adding a Secure Digital (SD) expansion card. That’s plenty of music to get you through a morning jog and then some, but if you want to keep your entire music collection stored on your player, you’ll prefer a larger-capacity, hard-drive–based player such as the iPod or the iPod mini. For a sense of how this translates into actual music time, 128MB gives you enough storage for about 139 minutes of MP3s encoded at a bit rate of 128 Kbps, whereas you’ll get about 279 minutes with 256MB of storage. However, these take up a negligible amount of space - less than 1MB in most cases.
FALSH MP3 PLAYER SOFTWARE
None will hold a full complement of songs - in other words, you can’t actually fit 128MB of MP3s on any of the 128MB players - due to the software and settings that come installed on the players. Some of these players (including the Cali and the Chiba) are available in multiple memory configurations. The Chiba, Cali, and irock 860 are 256MB players the rest of the players we tested are 128MB devices. Of these players, the Rio Cali was the clear winner. The PoGo AudioRave and the SmartDisk Rover are both marketed as thumbdrives (or tiny USB drives) with the added ability to play MP3s.
FALSH MP3 PLAYER PORTABLE
Most of these devices are designed exclusively as portable audio players and recorders, and all offer extra features, such as voice-recording functions, stopwatches, FM tuners, and equalizer presets. We tested seven flash-memory–based MP3 players: Rio’s Fuse, Chiba, and Cali Pogo Products’ AudioRave TDK’s Mojo 128F First International Digital’s irock 860 and SmartDisk’s Rover.
Given this new context, we decided it was time to look at the alternatives, for people who are on a tight budget and who just want to use a player at the gym or during a commute, and not for storing a huge music collection. Now the hard-drive–based iPod and iPod mini are the best-selling MP3 players on the market. Flash-memory–based players had been fairly inexpensive but very frustrating to use with Macs. When Apple’s iPod burst onto the scene, many people who previously hadn’t thought about buying an MP3 player snapped to attention.
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